Three Years and Counting

Hard to believe!

This next week - on Tuesday - it will be three years since I started "blogging." I still think the word blogging sounds like something a person with food poisoning does, but then ... that fits. Word poisoning is what it was. Too many words inside - had to get them out - they were festering in there, making me a bit ill. And so I blog.

That flower "cake" is from a place called Arena Flowers. Isn't it pretty? (You can click on it to see their florist site.)

I started blogging because I wanted a place for my words to be "out there" and available for criticism. I wanted to be able to really see my words again. It was like inviting company for dinner - all of a sudden you realize where the places are in your house that you haven't been cleaning. That was the first reason.

The second reason was a faint hope that maybe the people who kept insisting that writing about a thing had some power to make it happen might be onto something. Voice your dreams, they said. Say what you want, they said. ("Ye have not because ye ask not," He said.) And so I blogged. I wanted my sub job at the library back again. I wanted to go to school. And so I blogged. I said it. I wrote it. And poof! It happened. That was the second reason.

The third reason was so that there might be some non-threatening, challenge-free, openly giving way to communicate with people who might have known me when and wondered what happened since then and where I am now. This too has happened, but not as expected. In three years it has become obvious that an open offer of friendship and community is received openly by open people ... but those who perceive threats, challenges, and trickery in openness aren't actually helped by its offer. (dang. shoulda seen than coming) People I knew back in the olden days have found me, though. (You know who you are. I love you.) And I've found people I knew, too. And my brilliantly creative cousin started a blog of her own. And moms I knew in our homeschooling days stop by, and I stop in at their houses too, by way of their blogs, and while there I have met other moms who blog and now have several growing families I am enjoying. So, all in all, this third reason has been fulfilled. It's a kind of community here, and I like it.

I'm glad you're here, whoever you are. Thanks for reading my words. I appreciate it.